Essentials of behavioral analysis

First of all, it is worth mentioning that some resources use the terms dynamic analysis and behavioral analysis interchangeably. Dynamic analysis is the process of executing instructions in the debugger, while behavioral analysis involves a black-box approach when malware is executed under various monitoring tools to record the changes it introduces. This approach allows researchers to get a quick insight into malware functionality. However, there are multiple limitations associated with it, as follows:

• Malware may execute only a part of its functionality
• Malware may behave differently if it notices it’s being analyzed

In most cases, behavioral analysis tools can easily be detected by various characteristics: file, process or directory names, registry keys and values, mutexes, window names, and so on.

Now, let’s look at the most commonly used tools, grouping them by type.

File operations

Here, the goal is to...